Showing Up for the Bad Parts

I spent 12 years showing up for the bad parts of life - and obviously, the good parts too - and then my wife passed away, and now, four years after that, I can’t imagine being in another relationship ever again.

When you show up because someone else cannot, when you show up for them, when you show up when you have nothing left to show up with, but you do so anyway because somebody must… none of that is brave, noble or caring.

You just burn through pieces of yourself that do not regenerate.

No amount of sitting in the dark breathing quietly and telling yourself you survived will bring any of those parts of yourself back to you. The weirdest part of it is that you feel perfectly okay.

I feel perfectly okay. I go for walks, I go to work, I do my laundry, I shop for groceries, I make dinner, I pet my dog and complain about the weather. I make my coffee and try not to drink too much of it. I fill clear jars with water in the hope that I’ll drink more of it. I laugh at silly jokes, I cry at meaningful things.

But I’ve lost the ability to show up for the bad parts.

I don’t mean that I can’t solve problems. I’m calm and efficient in crises at work. I make appointments with relevant professionals to get issues resolved at home. I do the boring, mundane and occasionally difficult things even when I don’t want to. But I can’t any longer show up for the bad parts.

I can’t imagine arguing with a partner, for example.

I think of every spirited conversation, every capitulation, every argument and disagreement with my wife, how we tried so hard to meet each other where we were, learn about each other, understand each other’s way of thinking, learn not to take things personally, admit when our disagreements were projections of our unhealed trauma, agree to be on the same side, and learned - instead of compromise - to allow one of us to have our way in some situations and the other their way in other situations.

How it made us better people individually, brought us together as a couple, sometimes even healed long-standing wounds or at least, made us realize the healing we needed to focus on.

Then I turn to her to tell her how much I love her.

And realize over and again that she’s gone.

It doesn’t even make me sad.

It just makes me realize that I can’t show up for the bad parts of any new situation because I’m still showing up for the bad parts of the previous one.

[Addendum: I pulled a card at random from occult strategies and it said: “If it’s worth doing once, it’s worth doing seven times.”]